The Girl Who Didn't Know What To Believe

y fairies, and she had watched a newly born foal stagger up
onto its legs for the very first time (which was possibly the
most outstanding thing she’d ever seen). She told Bloomfield,
who said “Well those sound real special, and I bet you
a dollar for a nickel that seeing ‘em was different from being
told about them, or even seeing a picture?”
He was quite right, thought Meritxell, hoping that didn’t
mean she had to give him a dollar or even a nickel, because
she had neither. She’d learned about spiders’ webs in
school, and read about them in books, but to see one, and
think about the spider who’d spent all night making it, and
about all the flies minding their own business in a buzzy
way, when ‘wham’ they’d be caught, and wriggling would
only make it worse. Yes, seeing them was a different thing
entirely. And even though she could describe it to other
people with all the special adjectives in the dictionary, she
couldn’t take them there to see to really make them understand
how special it was.
“So have you been to the Moon?” Meritxell asked Bloomfield.
“No Maam”, he replied “There’s only a handful of
astronauts that were lucky enough to do that.” “So how”,
Meritxell continued, “do you know they went at all? People
on the Internet say it was all pretend!” “Well, ah can’t know
in the sense that ah was there,” Bloomfield replied, “but
ah’ve been in a rocket and been launched into space, so ah
know that part’s as real as the shoes on my feet. Then ah’ve
spoken to people who ran the Moon missions, and ah’ve
spoken with people who know the men who did go, and
ah’ve worked here in NASA all my life, and ah trust the
people here. They’re people who’ve always told the truth
about things ah do know about, so ah also trust them on
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